Things piling up on me, and I can't seem to stay near the front of the pile. I desperately need to get the larger heifers down to the back field to run with the bull. This will give room for the remaining to eat silage at the feeders. The big ones won't let the smaller eat. Inside the barn needs cleaned out & calves separated to go out in the small lot to get their hay from rolls. I'm almost out of square bales for weaned calves. With all the Dr's appointments & things going wrong, nothing really moves forward. I've been pulling calves from heifers a lot lately. The one I pulled Monday will have to be put down tomorrow. #197 that I treated for milk fever yesterday just went down in the parlor while Josh milked tonight. I suspect low phosphorous or potassium, but I've already given her meds for that. Anyway, with a wind chill of -7F and worn out, I had to go back out & get the Massey 362 & hooked up 2 chains to reach her in the corner of the parlor & drag her out. She's sitting up, but that's all I can do for her unless she decides to stand up. Right now she's sulled up, but I think she'll get on up later. If she does get up, she's getting sold Friday, and put in a pen until then. I started at 5:30 this morning and been in the cold most of the day, and here I get back in at 7:30. I did at least get the chance to eat supper after feeding silage.

Cold as it will be tomorrow, I have to try to get the breeding age heifers down the lane to the bull. Maybe I can at least get part of them. If I can get the calf maneuvering accomplished, then I may have enough square bales for the just weaned calves until spring.

Last week we lost a large heifer to bloat, and the fresh heifer will join that list tomorrow, and maybe 197 as well. When it gets cold, all hell seems to break loose as far as problems. If it weren't for my health issues, it would be a lot easier to deal with. Stress just makes healing worse. And I have many many other things needing tended to as well, but the list is too long to type now.

Back to the house where it's warm! Made some headway this morning. After milking, Teresa helped me separate the large heifers from the smaller. We can now feed the older weaned calves their hay outside via rolled hay. This may give us enough square bales left for the fresh weaned calves to limp through till spring. Putting a separate electric fence box on the small field where the older weaned will go out to. Too much crap shorts the other box that the wire goes down through the woods & next to the creek, and I want the large calves to get the crap knocked out of them if they attempt coming back through this fence to get at the grain feeder.

Got things ready to clean out the barn. The bottom of the gate at the end of the barn was buried in frozen manure, but I got the hi-lift jack & got it out, along with 2 or 3 hundred pounds of frozen manure stuck to it. The manure spreader is pulled outside out of the way, and got Hogzilla plugged in, warmed up, then moved to the goat shed. I will have to also use the Massey 1655D's loader to get into spots the Cat loader can't fit, so it's plugged in warming now to move down to the farm shop, where I'll keep the heat on low so it'll be ready to go after I get done milking. Gotta get some things taken care of around here!